Fall Foto Fun

 Heidi and I took our kids for a fun fall photo shoot. I was wanting pictures that captured my boys better than the school pictures do. The kids were more themselves than they usually are in front of a camera-Heidi has a way of making them forget about the camera, plus, my kids LOVE her and Cameron. When Keifer is around Heidi, I feel like the 2nd mom-he loves her that much. Then Cameron is like one of them, so they have great fun playing with him.

My favorite part is that I have a ton of pictures of my kids being my kids. That is a challenge to capture on camera.

This was too cute of Ellie and Keifer making faces.

Josh relaxing and having fun.

 

The whole crew goofing off.

He's certainly the baby-that face gets to me a lot-and he knows it.

I've seen this face before, pretty sure its hereditary :) I can hear him say, "Hmmm."

Trying to jump. 

Part of the Cameron fun.

We had a great time.

The Room Of Love (There really is an explanation-and its not what you think.)

Most of you know we've been redoing our bedroom for the last 6 months. We started by patching holes. Then we worked on fixing "little" inconsistencies in corners, which turned into wanting to change the texture of the ceiling and walls and Keith tried to fix the "seams" he could see in the sheetrock. Here is a picture gallery of the process:

Old Door (after I painted it)

Walls (after much patching)

Closet wall

Then there was the discovery of mold....

Lovely, huh? We're VERY grateful we found it.

This was the beginning of the demolition. If we had vent up anger, ripping out sheetrock surely helped ;)

There is a dark purple spot on the wall-that was paint choice #2. I love purple.

The closet wasn't very big, so we decided to make it larger. Which meant also moving the doorway.

So we lived like this for a while. (My new hallway closet is on the left and the new bedroom door meets up with the make-shift child block)

Ahhh, new sheetrock. We put anti-mold sheetrock on the bottom since there has been flooding in the basement. Thanks to Jeff for helping get the upper sheetrock up! I'm such a wimp. This was HOURS and HOURS of mudding and sanding-that led to the White Ghost (I can't repost the picture of that, or my marriage may be in jepardy ;) The kids liked helping, though (or pretending, anyway).

Here's my new closet. It has a larger opening and we added over 2 ft in length!!! Other than the door being moved, it didn't cut into the actual space of the room-how nice!

The dark purple was apparently a NO GO with the man of the house...so I taped up MANY options. And the winner is....

A faux brushed pearl finish in a color that I felt was a happy medium between purple and blue.

HAHAHA!

Keith really loved the look of the paint, but preferred the color you will soon see.

I spent a couple days getting the ceiling textured, which was pretty fun, priming and painting. Then Keith hung my new light.

It was starting to look REAL!! Then I added the base color.

And it was BLUE. It looked really cool, kind of like a really blue sky. I was scared-not quite what I was going for...the things you do for love ;)

Here's where the Room Of Love comes in. The brushed pearl finish starts with brushing the finish on in Xs and then you let it dry a little, use a plastic trowel to swirl the Xs into Os. I painted the Xs and Keith swirled the Os...Our room made with hugs and kisses! Yes, Keith thought it was very cheesy, too.

 

It looks way cool, I think and I was feeling a little better about the blue. After 2 coats of brushed pearl finish, which took approx. 5 hours to do (totally worth it, btw).

We put in all new outlets, covers and trim.

Keith also re-did the window seal, which was a bit nasty and uneven.

And then it was time to start on building the closet.

I'm now saving for carpet because everytime I turned around-Keith was cutting carpet (good thing we'd already planned on carpet replacement)

Almost there...

I could hardly wait to put clothes in. There was ROOM for them. I had so much fun later organizing my clothes into colors and etc. I even found a new outfit (not really new, but I was able to see some things that would go together!) Keith had no idea how much fun I'd have.  If you look hard you can see the cut carpet just to the left of the shelves. That is where the old closet was...not missing it.

I hung the curtains and blinds myself (I have to brag, because I used power tools and enjoyed it!)

Finished closet doors.

The furniture was my parents for years and I refinished them last year and I think they look GREAT in my new room.

AND we're DONE! Except for the wall decor-I had to see the room finished before I could move on to that. I'm loving the bedspread that Grandma Lila thought would look great in my room-it does!

It might not be purple, but its US and we LOVE it! Some people say remodeling is hard on a marriage, we actually found it fun to work together and enjoyed most of the process. Now on to the next room, YAY! Maybe we'll take a little breather first. 

The BIG Day!!

The Big Day finally came and here are a few pictures. It was great to see a lot of family and friends that we don't get to see often, including my cousin that lives in the Netherlands! She didn't come to the states for the wedding, but she was visiting her family while here and I was glad I finally got to see her.


Here's a picture of Keith playing with his new phone. This is how he looked all night. After the blackberry drowned in the pool, I thought we'd have a night of silence...nope, he's always on call. Sometimes I wonder if he knows where the off button is ;).
If you look at the bottom you can see that I had cute hair for a while. It was so hot that my hair didn't look good for very long. But I had to note that I did put in the effort.



Melanie and I helping with the dress's final touches. That ended up being a fun moment.


The boys horsing around.


I think the funniest part of the whole night was Jeff's little boy. He was in charge of walking Dave's little girl, Karlie, down the isle. But it didn't end there. He held her hand ALL night. He even danced with her several times. He took his job way serious and you could tell he had a lot of fun doing it.


Most of the wedding party.


New additions to the family!!!!

BJ, and his daughters, McKenzie and Krista. They are gorgeous girls. I'm excited to spend some quality time with them.


The happy couple with Mom & Dad: They are pretty cute.


It was a good day. We are so happy for Chellena and BJ.

It Looks SO Painful!

Chellena had several of the nieces and nephews involved in the wedding and here are some pictures from the wedding rehearsal. You would think the girls have koodies, or something (from the looks on my boys' faces, anyway).



Do I really have to sit by her???

I got a kick out of these pictures. You'd never know these boys were girl crazy from the way they act around them! I didn't think they'd have a problem with their cousins! When I asked Matt how the rehearsal went he said "STUPID! We had to link arms!" I died laughing because I KNOW Chellena told him that is what would happen.

Fourth of July...Want Some Licorice?

We went to the parade, as always. Boy it was long this year. But the kids got to sit with some of their cousins.

This year me, Matt and Joe went to Dutch John with my parents and we met Jeff and Laura there for the fireworks. This was my first time for the fireworks in Dutch John, and outside of waiting our turn to get out of town...totally worth it!

The next night we were too tired from church and things to go to the city park for the fireworks, so my parents came up for dinner and we sat on our porch. Rick and Annalee were in town and able to join us as well. We decided the city fireworks are pretty good from our porch, especially when you add a bunch of our own. The kids had a blast! And they ate a lot of licorice.

Keifer and Livvy were the big licorice eaters-but it looks like Livvy enjoyed hers more than anyone!

Chellena got engaged!!!!

This happened back in February. She began dating Bruce Ellis (we call him BJ) back in October, I think. He came out Thanksgiving weekend to see Chellena and we all knew they must like each other if he was willing to travel 3 hours to spend a few with her.

They began planning the wedding and it became official in February (I think). We were really excited. BJ treats Chellena very well and is very kind. Welcome to the family, BJ!

Cousin Camp 2010

Again, no pictures. I snitched this one from one of my cousin's blogs because it had my kids in it. Thanks Marissa!

We did our annual Caldwell Cousin Camp in June and, as always, the kids loved it! Crafts, games, playing, prizes....FUN! We did a carnival again this year and Heather found an idea for a booth I couldn't resist. Toilet Paper Toss. We rigged a toilet seat to a bucket with duct tape and the kids had to throw 4 rolls of toilet paper in the toilet to get a Whoopee Cushion prize. If all 4 didn't make it in, they got tootsie rolls. There weren't many girls who gave it more than 1 try, but I had probably about 10 of the boys hanging out messing with their whoopee cushions for quite a while. Yes, this is the life I live. My boys loved it and we had a lot of fun.

Johnson Reunion 2010

I didn't end up with any pictures this summer. I carry diapers and snacks, wipe hands clean and chase 4 busy little boys. I don't get pictures taken. So someone please take pity on me and send a picture of the family from the reunion and I'll post it.
Church's Website
We started our reunion at Temple Square...which I have to say is one of my VERY favorite places on earth! My sister prepared a picture treasure hunt. Each family had a sheet of paper with pictures of various items on temple square and we went sequentially from picture to picture until the entire family ended up at the Christus where someone took pictures (I hope to remember to get a copy from someone). Then we finished with a short Family Home Evening in one of the theaters on Temple Square where we learned that families are treasures. Each of the kids received a "created" diamond as their reminder that their families are treasures and we can have them forever through the blessings of the temple. Keifer especially liked the chocolate coins that we all got as well.

This picture I managed to get on my phone. We were traveling from Tooele (where my sister lives) to Eagle Mountain (to stay with my brother) and Matt looked like this. He had gotten the goggles from the reunion and he had ear plugs in the van. Doesn't it look like I have a VERY special son? This gave us a good laugh, which we needed because we took the VERY long way from Tooele to Eagle Mountain that trip. It was suppose to be the way to avoid traffic and its a bit quicker. We'd gone that way before and somehow missed the turn we were supposed to take-maybe its because we didn't believe what our GPS was telling us. ;P
We knew we'd done something wrong when we ran into a sign that said "Delta -> Elberta <-" Oops! On the bright side...we saw 2 firework shows in Utah County as we drove on the OTHER side of the lake back to Eagle Mountain.

I just remember that we were "Making Memories"
It was a great reunion and we enjoyed spending time with my family.

I Had a Birthday...Shout Hooray!

I celebrated turning 31 in May this year. My birthday really doesn't end up being a big deal. I just need my family and closest friends to remember, and that is all. And, I don't like to cook on that day-so we went to dinner-always a treat.

My brother's family started sending everyone a birthday card with a package of Pop Rocks to each of us for a birthday a couple years ago. We all look forward to our birthday Pop Rocks coming in the mail. I was selfish this year and didn't share mine. I waited until everyone was busy and poured them in a cup of applesauce for only me...and I liked it!

Tea Party (Catching up)

Each Spring, Keith's mom hosts a Tea Party for her granddaughters. Of course, we don't drink tea, just a yummy wassil. It is an afternoon filled with dressing up, learning how and practicing proper manners, and eating an assortment of yummy finger foods. Yes, this post is late because the tea party was in May, but this is for my records and I wanted to make sure some of these items are in it. I have grown to thoroughly enjoy the tea party. My mother-in-law has invited me to help teach the manners the last couple of years and I have had a blast being a part of things (since I don't have any little girls to dress up and take). However, I could probably put a diaper bonnet on Keifer with a pretty dress and pass him off for a daughter next year!

We had a visit from Fancy Nancy (Aunt Heather) and Sloppy Sally (Grandma Nena) where they each showed us what to and NOT to do. We have a lot of fun watching Sloppy Sally be silly. I have a cute little poem we used that Grandma Nena's friend put together and we read while Fancy Nancy and Sloppy Sally acted it out. This is a day the girls look forward to each year. Especially for me since I get to play dress up with my nieces for a day...in a house where dress up involves lightsabers and swords and nothing proper...you might see why I look forward to this event.